I’ve got your missing links right here (13 April 2013)

Top picks

Wonderful explanation from Neuroskeptic about how minds arise from brains

“I had no power to say that’s not okay.” Harrowing, important, shocking post from Kate Clancy about a study looking at assault, harrassment and rape in field anthropology.

Elsevier & Mendeley: Why the Science-Journal Giant Bought Rebel Start-Up. By David Dobbs.

Why Does Music Feel So Good? More superb stuff from Virginia Hughes

How monarch butterflies migrate over 4,000 kilometres without a map. My piece for Nature News.

An amazing mishmash of a hominid: Brian Switek on new studies of Australopithecus sediba

To E-read, Or Not to E-read? Ferris Jabr looks at reading in the digital age.

Is the BRAIN initiative BAM or BUST? Great run-through by SciCurious. Also, three great pieces on the initiative by Erin McKiernan and an interesting defence of BRAIN’s goals. And try guess which project—Human Genome Project or Brain Initiative—scientists are complaining about from these quotes

Why Lois Lane matters: she’s a feminist icon.

I’m a scientist. A social scientist. Please opine on the validity of my discipline

Essential reading. Stupid things to say to people w/ cancer. And much better things to say to be a friend to someone with serious illness. By the inspiring Lisa Bonchek Adams. And along similar lines: People share the most comforting words they’ve encountered in dealing with grief

Tips from the animal kingdom: put yourself in danger to blackmail your parents for food

One hot gene & how it could lead to the next statin. Great feature by Stephen S. Hall

17-yr-old Fred Turner wins engineering prize for his home-built PCR machine!

Awesome. Spiders are pioneers that arrive first and engineer worlds.

Bugs as drugs. Carl Zimmer’s blog post on turning the microbiome into medicine.

The Oatmeal on Mantis Shrimps. And here’s a collection of my pieces on mantis shrimps, from their eyes to their fists.

The end of sleep? Jessica Gamble reports. (Already there, science. Already there…)

An incredible graveyard of dinosaur embryos and *cough*organicresidues*cough* What? Who said that? My piece for The Scientist

More important reading on the new H7N9 bird flu: Tara Smith discusses it and other bird flus over at Slate, Laurie Garrett goes over the virus’s mysterious aspects, and David Quammen has an opinion piece at NatGeo,

A different kind of “de-extinction”: researchers discover that an extinct turtle never actually existed

I wrote about a study showing that many neuroscience studies are underpowered. The first author, Kate Button, has written a great summary of the paper and what it means

Science/news/writing

Krulwich on one of my favourite sci-comm… campaigns?

Remember the two-headed bull shark pup? Here’s a two-headed baby blue shark. The experiments at working!

Interesting new science/culture magazine called Nautilus getting ready to launch

Enough urging women to freeze their eggs—men should freeze their sperm, too.

An interview with Adam Rutherford about his new book Creation.

An important moment for psychology: a failure to replicate a Psych Sci paper, conducted together with the original authors, published in Psych Sci

I finally read EO Wilson’s op/ed on maths. It seems nuanced and positive; can’t believe it generated the vitriol it did. Here’s a good response.

Big ugly fish eats cute little seabird.

DON’T FEED AFTER MIDNIGHT. Beautiful Striped Bat Identified as Entirely New Genus

Fat-fuelled power station is a crackling idea.

When Animals Mourn: Seeing That Grief Is Not Uniquely Human

Can inoculating newborns with innocuous strains of bacteria save them from deadly ones?

Magic! Researchers turn liberals into conservatives ahead of general election

US congressman cites biblical flood to dispute human link to climate change

Great white sharks will behave strangely when there’s a whale to scavenge upon

MD Anderson’s Bharat Aggarwal threatens to sue Retraction Watch

Squid’s Daily Rhythms Are Controlled by Glowing Symbiotic Bacteria

The food of choice for astronauts? Shrimp cocktail.

“You’ll feel like you’ve just read a tale of phrenology rather than epigenetics.” Ouch! Annalee Newitz’s review of a new story on epigenetics and violence.

An ENCODE (and Big Science) critique for grown-ups, by Sean Eddy

A… traumatic… video on bed bug sex

Thore Bergmann thought the monkeys were talking behind his back. Here’s what happened after that

Hmm. Extraordinary tubes of ice could be as significant for the origin of life as hydrothermal vents.

Rhino horn DNA database introduced, following string of museum thefts ”

Climate change is winning the war on terroir

Negative reinforcement: climate change might mean bumpier flights in the future

Genetic ‘kill switch’ eradicates an entire sex for greater efficiency. In silkworms. Less sinister than it sounds.

One of 2012’s best stories—Matter’s first issue on Body Integrity Identity Disorder—is now free to read

Baroness Greenfield: more a priest than a scientist. Possibly an agent of Cobra. Also: “Evidence is for bitter people who hate children” – from the DIY Greenfield article generator

A new study on penises. In PNAS. (Interesting data, but spurious evolutionary speculation tacked on.) SciCurious finds it unsatisfying.

More evidence tying gut bacteria to obesity. By Virginia Hughes.

No, commenter, epigenetics is not a leftist conspiracy.

Love it. NeuroSkeptic publishes paper on anonymity in science in Trends in Cognitive Science under his pseudonym.

Global burden of dengue is triple current estimates

“Nocturnal, transparent, tiny fish in the Amazon went undiscovered because it was hard to find” No kidding…

Red meat + wrong bacteria = bad news for hearts?

Carl Zimmer on the trouble with the Up Goer Five craze

Solar planes are cool, but they’re not the future of flight

Yoink. NASA mulls asteroid capture mission, eventual manned visits.

Heh/wow/huh

Whoever named this butterfly was a jerk.

5th-Grade Science Paper Doesn’t Stand Up To Peer Review

Giant brain takes over Brazil.

A bloody marvellous PSA in which Batgirl demands equal pay.

The most Daily Mail headline the Daily Mail has ever Daily Mailed?

I can’t believe I just watched this whole thing. Snake: The Unbearably Tense Movie.

Deep sea creatures. With googly eyes.

A crested caracara, giving it some serious oontz.

Astonishingly colorful mountains in China.

Stock-Photo Model Scout Sees Something Special In Man In Business Suit Crossing Arms

What’s the worst thing that can happen when misusing a pressure cooker?

Cher is not dead.

Reasons my son is crying

Internet/society/journalism

Google Tools To Control Data After Death

Twitter’s big challenge? Too much Twitter.

Cool tool for converting a list of links into a single link.

There’s a wonderful “British Problems” section of Reddit.

Everyone hates banner ads, especially the guys who invented banner ads

Happy Birthday, Eadweard Muybridge, You Have a Lot of GIFs to Answer For

Lo, There Shall Come A Sexism!

How Bitcoin works in four paragraphs

Thinking of yelling something at a woman walking down the street? First, check this etiquette guide!

Fake Twitter followers becomes a multimillion dollar business